We were lucky to catch up with Sara Costin Mockus recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sara, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
Our team says that we have “magic in a bottle”. Individually we are experts, together we are magic. I love this and I will do everything in my power to protect it at all costs. From our first hire, which was someone who used to work for my husband, to today where we are currently 15 strong and still hiring, we ensure that every new hire buys into the magic – the idea that yes you can probably do it on your own, but you work with your colleagues because you know that the end product will be fire. From employee one to employee fifteen we ask the same questions – what drives you, what does a perfect day at work look like to you, do you want to work hard and play hard – CPOG is different from any other public outreach firm around today.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started my career in New York and Washington politics and campaigns. I worked for the 1996 re-election of President Clinton. I was the Northeast Political Director responsible for 13 states (Maine to Maryland) plus the District of Columbia. I stayed in DC post-election and worked in healthcare for a few years – at the Department of Health and Human Services, at a PR firm, and then as a federal lobbyist. In 2003, on April Fool’s Day, I walked to work and quit my job, took the first flight out to Los Angeles. For the next year, I didn’t read a newspaper, watch CNN, or the Sunday morning shows (true DC geek!) and sometime in August, sold my condo, packed all my bags, and moved permanently. After one year of reading US Weekly and going to movie premieres, I went back into healthcare PR but I missed the grassroots outreach of it. I learned that California had a law that required grassroots public outreach to be performed – the California Environmental Quality Act. Similar to NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), CEQA made it difficult for projects to be approved whether vertical (land use) or horizontal (transportation), and I found my calling. After working at two firms, I decided that I wanted to do it my way, the way I learned while working for a sitting president. I call it white glove service. And thus CPOG was born. From day one to today, we leverage our white-glove service with our innovative approaches and proven methodologies to create an environment where all stakeholder voices are heard. Our philosophy is that every stakeholder in every community should be involved in delivering a result. We talk to people where they are, in their language, so that they understand what is happening in their community and how they can participate in the process.
Any advice for managing a team?
For me, it goes back to the idea that you cannot fit a square peg in a round hole. There is a lot of noise about improving staff weaknesses, but at CPOG, we focus on staff strengths. In my humble opinion, titles really are cheap, and we should hire, promote, recognize, and celebrate people for what they are good at because not everyone is good at that “thing”, but “Sally” is the best at it, so “Sally” should run that part of the business/client work. People are motivated by doing a good job; everyone wants their manager to say “good job,” and you cannot do that if you are improving someone’s weaknesses. Give someone a title, a job, a task that they enjoy and that they will succeed at, and now you have 15 people all working at an expert level doing what they love to do. This is the magic! And this is genius for anyone managing a team and maintaining high morale.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I’m not sure I have one specific story, but more of an idea of why I run my business/manage staff the way I do. When I first started my career, I was a woman in Washington, DC in the early 90s – it was a male dominated world. One day I had scheduled a big meeting for a client, I was the account executive on the business. When we gathered in the conference room, my boss looked at me and asked me to go down the street and get everyone coffee. My head almost exploded. Here I was in a meeting that I scheduled, with a high ranking official from the government, with my contacts, and my boss flew in that morning to attend the meeting having no idea what it was about or what the goal was, and he looked at me as if I was his secretary. In my mid-twenties I stood up for myself – I said no, but I’ll send “Sally” who was our administrative assistant. I then proceeded to run the meeting and ask for what our client needed. I’ll never forget that day and how he made me feel. I never want anyone to ever feel that feeling. At CPOG we are all a part of a team. We all trust fall for each other. And I more often than not am the person getting everyone coffee.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.costinoutreachgroup.com
- Linkedin: @costinpublicoutreachgroup